vRealize Automation 8 - Part2 - Initial configuration using quickstart

In this article, I will briefly explain how to set up your on-prem SDDC infrastructure for provisioning with vRA 8.0 using quickstart wizard. Follow my previous blog post vRA 8.0 - Part1 for the complete installation procedure. After a successful deployment, you can access the vRA Cloud Services Console.

Click Launch Quickstart.

Provide vCenter server details and click Validate.

Click Accept.

Select the datacenter to allow provisioning and click Create and go to next step.

Select the NSX version if you have it configured in your environment. In my case, I don't have NSX. So select None and click Create and go to next step.

Provide the basic configuration details like Datacenter, Template, Datastore, and Network. Quickstart will use this info to create your first blueprint and releases it to the catalog. This can be used for your first deployment. Here I've selected a centos7 template. 

Click Next step.

Select governance policies. I am using the defaults. Click Next step.

Review summary and click Run quickstart.

Note that here I did not select to "Automatically deploy my template when quickstart completed". In this case, a blueprint will be created and releases it to the catalog. You can request the catalog item to deploy it.

Once all the steps are completed, click Close.

At this point, a blueprint will be created under the quickstart project. And it can be seen under Cloud Assembly > Blueprints.

This blueprint is available as a catalog item. It can be seen under Service Broker > Catalog Items.

Hope it was useful. Cheers!

Related posts

vRealize Automation 8 - Part1 - Installation

Working with REST API using PowerShell

In this blog, I am consolidating all the articles I published regarding REST APIs and PowerShell. This will be useful for all those who like to kick-start working with various REST APIs using PowerShell.

iDRAC

Working with iDRAC9 Redfish API using PowerShell - Part 1

Working with iDRAC9 Redfish API using PowerShell - Part 2

Working with iDRAC9 Redfish API using PowerShell - Part 3

Working with iDRAC9 Redfish API using PowerShell - Part 4

VxFlex OS (ScaleIO)

Working with ScaleIO REST API using PowerShell - Part 1

Working with ScaleIO REST API using PowerShell - Part 2

Working with ScaleIO REST API using PowerShell - Part 3

Creating HTML report of ScaleIO cluster using PowerShell

Cisco Nexus 9K switch

Working with Cisco Nexus 9K switches using PowerShell

Hope it was useful. Cheers!

References

https://virtuallysober.com/2018/01/04/introduction-to-powershell-rest-api-authentication/

vRealize Operations Manager 7.5 - Part10 - Adding Remote Collector Node

In this article, I will briefly explain the configuration of a remote collector node and a sample scenario too.

Note: Before adding the remote collector nodes a vROps master node should be present.

Refer to my previous blogs for the installation and configuration of the vROps master node and enabling high availability. Here I have a single node vROps 7.5 instance which is a master and I will be expanding it with a remote collector node.

Consider the following scenario:

Datacenter A is the head office where the vROps master is installed. Datacenter B and C need to be monitored using the vROps instance configured at Datacenter A. In this case, Remote Collector nodes are installed at Datacenter B and C. As per VMware recommendation the latency between sites should be 200ms or less. 

Refer vROps 7.5 reference architecture for recommendations from VMware on different deployment profiles and other best practices. 

Deploy a vROps instance at the remote location and open its management IP address in a web browser. 

Click on Expand an existing installation.

Click Next.

Provide a name for the collector node and select node type Remote Collector.

Enter IP of vROps master node and click Validate.

Click Next.

Provide cluster admin password and click Next.

Click Finish.

This may take around 6-8 minutes to complete.

Select Finish adding new nodes.

Click OK.

The remote collector is now part of the cluster.

Now log in to the master vROps instance.
Select Administration > Management > Collector Groups.
You can see only the master node is part of the Default collector group.
Click Create collector Group (+).

Provide a name and select the remote collector node.

Now you can see the remote collector node is part of the newly created collector group.

Now, we will add a vCenter Adapter instance that will monitor the vCenter server of the remote site using the newly added remote collector node.

Click Administration > Solutions > Configuration > VMware vSphere.
Click Configure (gear icon).

Click (+) to add a new vCenter adapter and provide the necessary details.

In the advanced settings, select the collector group.

Click Test connection, Accept and save settings. 

Click OK.

Verify the collection state and status.

Hope it was useful. Cheers.

Related posts

vRealize Operations Manager 7.5 - Part1 - Installation

vRealize Operations Manager 7.5 - Part2 - Configure vCenter adapter and dashboards overview

vRealize Operations Manager 7.5 - Part3 - Rightsizing

vRealize Operations Manager 7.5 - Part4 - High availability

vRealize Operations Manager 7.5 - Part5 - Alerting

vRealize Operations Manager 7.5 - Part6 - Adding new symptoms and alert definitions

vRealize Operations Manager 7.5 - Part7 - vSAN monitoring and troubleshooting

vRealize Operations Manager 7.5 - Part8 - Super Metrics

vRealize Operations Manager 7.5 - Part9 - Dashboard sharing

Docker 101 Blog Series

Consolidating my Docker 101 blog series.

Docker 101 - Part1 - Installation

Docker 101 - Part2 - Basic operations

Docker 101 - Part3 - Persisting data using volumes

Docker 101 - Part4 - Creating images using dockerfile

VMware PowerCLI 101 - part6 - vSphere networking

Networking is one of the important factors for ensuring service availability. Incorrect network configurations will lead to the unavailability of data and services and if this happens in a production environment it will negatively affect the business. 

In this article, I will briefly explain how to use PowerCLI to work with basic vSphere networking.

Connect to vCenter server using:
Connect-VIServer <IP address of vCenter>

VM IP

To get all IP details of a VM:
(Get-VM -Name <VM name>).Guest.IPAddress

VM network adapters, MAC, and IP

To get all network adapters, MAC address and IP details of a VM:
(Get-VM -Name <VM name>).Guest.Nics | select *

OR

(Get-VM -Name <VM name>).ExtensionData.Guest.Net

VDS

To get all the Virtual Distributed Switches (VDS):
Get-VDSwitch

To get all the details of a specific VDS:
Get-VDSwitch -Name <VD Switch name> | select *

To get VDS security policy:
Get-VDSwitch -Name <VD Switch name> | Get-VDSecurityPolicy | select *

VD Port group

To get all port groups of a specific VDS:
Get-VDPortgroup -VDSwitch <VD Switch name>

To get all the details of a specific port group in a VDS:
Get-VDPortgroup -VDSwitch <VD Switch name> -Name <Port group name> | select *

VD Port

To get all VD ports of a specific VD port group in a VDS:
Get-VDSwitch <VD Switch name> | Get-VDPortgroup <Port group name> | Get-VDPort

To get only active VD ports of a specific VD port group in a VDS:

Get-VDSwitch <VD Switch name> | Get-VDPortgroup <Port group name> | Get-VDPort -ActiveOnly

To get all details of a specific VD port in a VDS:

Get-VDPort -Key <Value> -VDSwitch <VD Switch name> | select * 

VM connected to a VD port

To get the VM that is connected to a VD port:
(Get-VDPort -Key <Value> -VDSwitch <VD Switch name>).ExtensionData.Connectee
Get-VM -Id <VM Id>

Find VM using NIC MAC

Get-VM | where {$_.ExtensionData.Guest.Net.MacAddress -eq '<MAC Address>'}

Hope it was useful. Cheers!

Related posts

VMware PowerCLI 101 - Part1 - Installing the module and working with stand-alone ESXi host

VMware PowerCLI 101 - Part2 - Working with vCenter server

VMware PowerCLI 101 - Part3 - Basic VM operations

VMware PowerCLI 101 - Part4 - Snapshots

VMware PowerCLI 101 - Part5 - Real time storage IOPS and latency

Working with iDRAC9 Redfish API using PowerShell - Part 4

In this article, I will explain how to use iDRAC Redfish API to Power On and Graceful Shutdown a server using PowerShell. This is applicable to all Dell EMC servers having iDRAC. It can be a general-purpose PowerEdge rack server, Ready Node, Appliance, etc. I've tested on iDRAC9.

Note: In a production environment please make sure to follow proper shutdown or reboot procedure (if any) before performing any system reset actions on the server.

[CmdletBinding()]

param(

    [Parameter(Mandatory)]

    [String]$idrac_ip,

    [Parameter(Mandatory)]

    [ValidateSet('On', 'GracefulShutdown')]

    [String]$ResetType

)

#To fix the connection issues to iDRAC REST API

add-type @"

    using System.Net;

    using System.Security.Cryptography.X509Certificates;

    public class TrustAllCertsPolicy : ICertificatePolicy {

    public bool CheckValidationResult(

        ServicePoint srvPoint, X509Certificate certificate,

        WebRequest request, int certificateProblem) {

        return true;

        }

    }

"@

[System.Net.ServicePointManager]::CertificatePolicy = New-Object TrustAllCertsPolicy

[System.Net.ServicePointManager]::SecurityProtocol = [System.Net.SecurityProtocolType]::Tls12 -bor [System.Net.SecurityProtocolType]::Tls11

#Get iDRAC creds

$Credentials = Get-Credential -Message "Enter iDRAC Creds"

$JsonBody = @{"ResetType" = $ResetType} | ConvertTo-Json

$u1 = "https://$($idrac_ip)/redfish/v1/Systems/System.Embedded.1/Actions/ComputerSystem.Reset"

Invoke-RestMethod -Uri $u1 -Credential $Credentials -Method Post -UseBasicParsing -ContentType 'application/json' -Body $JsonBody -Headers @{"Accept"="application/json"} -Verbose

Hope it was useful. Cheers!

Related posts

Working with iDRAC9 Redfish API using PowerShell - Part 1

Working with iDRAC9 Redfish API using PowerShell - Part 2

Working with iDRAC9 Redfish API using PowerShell - Part 3

References

iDRAC9 Redfish API guide

vRealize Automation 8 - Part1 - Installation

Background

• vRealize Automation (vRA) has two consumption models now:
• vRA on-prem
• vRA cloud (SAAS offering)
• From vRA 8.0 onwards the same code being used in vRA cloud is taken and packaged together for on-prem use.
• vRA 8.0 is focused on greenfield environments (new vRA deployments).
• If you want to upgrade from vRA 7.x VMware recommends waiting until vRA 8.x as it will have a migration tool that helps the upgrade process. 

Before starting the installation process, I strongly recommend you to go through the below documentation links.

vRA 8.0 release notes

vRA 8.0 what's new overview

vRA 8.0 reference architecture guide

Installation

Download the installer ISO file and mount it. If you are running it from a Windows machine, browse to win32 folder and run installer.exe file. During the installation process first LCM VM will be deployed and it is responsible for deploying IDM and vRA VMs.

Note: Make sure DNS entries for LCM, IDM, and vRA are present and resolvable.

Click install.

Click next.

Accept EULA.

Provide vCenter details.

Accept.

Select a datacenter location.

Select a compute cluster.

Select a datastore.

Provide network configuration details.

Set password.

Provide LCM config details.

Provide IDM config details.

Provide vRA config details.

Review summary.

Click submit to start the installation process.

Once the installation is successful you will get the following URLs to navigate to vRSLCM and vRA UI.

Login to LCM.

Login to vRA.

Provide creds.

There you go! vRA 8.0 is successfully deployed.

Hope it was useful. Cheers!

References

https://videos.vmworld.com/global/2019/videoplayer/29414